Smartphone virtual goods comprise an interesting sub-market for virtual goods sales overall. Unfortunately, the buying habits of mobile consumers remain a mystery to developers and publishers. Frank N. Magid Associates and social gaming network OpenFeint have partnered in order to shed some light on the situation. The results of their study were released today.
The study, ‘Magid Media Futures 2010 Wireless and Consumers,’ reports that Americans spent $168 million in mobile virtual goods within the last year. The study estimates that over 23 percent of the population own smartphones, a number that comes to around 70 million users. 45 percent of smartphone users play mobile games and 16 percent of those gamers spend an average of $41 per year on virtual goods in-game. With those numbers, the market has already exceeded last year’s $168 million.
“The market for virtual goods has already exploded in web-based games like Zynga’s Farmville, and we’re just now starting to see this trend in the mobile space,” said Aurora Feint VP of Operations Steve Lin. “In just the last few months we've seen amazing interest from our game developers in building mobile social games with virtual goods. Our internal numbers reflect the study in that free-to-play models will be the dominant pricing structure in the future."
The market is ready for strong growth in this category, with 55 percent of smartphone gamers interested in buying virtual goods. The study also provides some demographics for smartphone gamers, with most being males between the ages of 18 and 34.
They download an average of 14 games per year with 10 of those titles being free downloads. These American smartphone gamers tend to review app store rankings very closely, but will impulse purchase depending on word of mouth or friend recommendation.
"Everybody knows free-to-play social gaming models on PC platforms have been making a killing but mobile virtual goods aren't as well understood," said Mike Vorhaus, President of Magid Advisors. "With almost 20 percent of smartphone gamers already making purchases, there's a lot of room for the market to keep taking off as smartphones continue to increase in popularity."
